Buzz Out Loud Wiki:Sign your comments
Signing your posts on and other Buzz out loud wiki discourse is good etiquette and facilitates discussion by helping other users to identify the author of a particular comment. The responder can navigate to talk pages and address their comments to the specific relevant user(s). Discussion is an important part of collaborative editing because it helps all users to understand the progress and evolution of a work. Edits on main Buzz Out Loud Wiki article pages should not be signed—the article is a shared work based on the contributions of many people and one editor should not be singled out above others. Purpose of signatures Signatures on Buzz Out Loud Wiki identify you as a user, and your contributions to Buzz Out Loud Wiki. They encourage civility in discussions by identifying the author of a particular comment, and the date and time at which it was made. Because of that, having an uncivil signature is strongly discouraged (in some cases, to the point of blocking the user until it is changed). In general, anything that is not allowed in a user name should not be used in a signature either. When signatures should and should not be used Any post made to user talk pages, article talk pages, or other discussion pages should be signed. Edits to articles should not be signed, as signatures on Buzz Out Loud Wiki are not intended to indicate ownership or authorship of any Buzz Out Loud Wiki article. Rather, the edit history takes care of the need to identify edits with users. Signatures should therefore not be used in edit summaries as they do not translate from ~~~~. In other instances when posts should not be signed, specific instructions are provided to contributors. How to sign your posts There are two ways to sign your posts: 1. At the end of your comments, simply type four tildes (~), like this: ~~~~. 2. If you are using the edit toolbar option (it usually appears above the edit screen as a defaultIf the browser's settings don't allow JavaScript, the icons appear only if the settings are changed. If the browser is set not to show pictures the icon can be found on "Your signature with timestamp".), click the signature icon to add the four tildes. Your signature will appear after you have saved the changes. The end result is the same in both cases. Typing four tildes will result in the following: Since typing four tildes adds the time and date to your resulting signature, this is the preferred option for signing your posts in discussions. Typing three tildes results in the following: Since this does not date-stamp your signature, you may wish to sign this way when leaving general notices on your user page or user talk page. This is also a convenient shortcut (rather than typing out the full code) when you want to provide a link to your user page. Typing five tildes will convert to a date stamp with the current date and time, without adding your signature, like this: Note that if you choose to contribute to Buzz Out Loud Wiki without logging in, you should still sign your posts. In this case, your IP address will take the place of your username. Your IP address might look something like this: 192.0.2.58. Some users prefer to use their IP address instead of a user name because they think that an IP provides them with more anonymity. In actual fact, a pseudonymous account (that is, a registered user name) actually provides you with more protection of your identity as IP addresses can be easily tracked by anyone. Registered users have their IP addresses hidden from public view. Note also that signing manually with a pseudonym or tag such as ''--anon'' does not give you more anonymity or privacy protection, since your IP address will still be stored in the page history. This also makes it more difficult for other users to communicate with you. If you choose to sign this way, you should still type four tildes: ''--anon'' ~~~~.